The Site

Est. circa 1999.

I created this site originally to house pictures of the kids for out-of-town relatives, and to share our family happenings. Since then the site has undergone many revisions, and perhaps feature creep, to arrive at what you access today.

Originally it was hand-coded out of rock hard HTML and hosted by my dial-up ISP. It featured a rough blog-ish news area and rudimentary photo gallery. After discovering blogging, and subsequently Blogger, I upgraded the news area to use Blogger.

Then Renee gave me the green light to upgrade our dial-up connection to broadband. With my interests in networking growing, I had been wanting to play around with server software (web, ftp, etc). I figured what better way to play around with server software, than running my own site. So I setup IIS and moved everything from the old ISP to my shiny new setup.

Further adventures into the blogging universe led me to find other blogging/CMS software packages and Linux. Now I had played with Linux before, but for whatever reason, I could never fully grasp using it. I was bound and determined to conquer it so, I figured lets move the site over to Linux. This also allowed me to move the site off of my main computer and onto a older, slower, yet dedicated computer. I initial began using PHPnuke for the blogging aspects and switched to Gallery embedded within it for the picture gallery. All this ran on RedHat 9. The chemistry between PHPnuke and I just wasn’t there, so after an exhaustive search and several unsuccessful courtships with other CMS packages, I decided to give Drupal a try.

At the same time, I switch Linux distros, moving from RedHat to Debian and finally to Gentoo. With RedHat I felt I hadn’t fully learned Linux as I still hadn’t learned what programs were used for what purpose. The move to Debian didn’t fell right either, so I tried Gentoo and I was home! Forcing me to install the whole system by hand, taught me what I wanted to know. And to top it off, I had a killer, fully optimized system, that I had actually loaded on an even slower computer than its RedHat brethren. But, I’ll spare you the details and save that for a review of Gentoo.

By this time, the role of the site progressed. The news area of the site slowly transformed into a full blown blog. I added a section to post guides and how-to’s on the stuff I have discovered along the way. And with the recent addition of the digital camera, the gallery is update more often now.

My original goal was a unified website, with all the various software components integrated together, having single sign on (SSO) for the various software components, and a consistent look. Well, while I do waste my time so you don’t have to, I don’t have that much time to waste, so to hell with my goals. Actually, they will just be put on the backburner. The latest version is running WordPress for blogging, Gallery2 for the picture gallery, and Wikka Wiki for the wiki.

So there you have it. The history of how it all began.

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